Pale greenish-white jade cup with Daoist figures, China, Qing dynasty (1271–1368), Qianlong period (1736–1795). Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, anonymous gift.
Clarissa von Spee, curator and Chair of Asian Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, comes on the pod to discuss a pair of ornately carved Qing Dynasty jade vessels, made by masters in Suzhou, China. Probably luxury objects and perhaps gifts, they’re just a couple of the more than two hundred objects on view as part of the exhibition China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta, the first exhibition in the West that focuses on the artistic production and cultural impact of a region located in the coastal area south of the Yangzi River.
Clarissa von Spee brings more than a decade of museum experience to the Cleveland Museum of Art. She received her PhD from Heidelberg University, having also studied in Taipei, Shanghai, and Paris. From 2008 until 2016, von Spee served as curator of the Chinese and Central Asian Collections, Department of Asia, at the British Museum in London, and in 2013 became a Fellow of the Center of Visual Studies at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. She had previously been assistant professor at the Institute for East Asian Art History, Heidelberg University, and curator at the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst in Cologne.
